Mother-daughter communication about puberty in Egypt

Abstract

Parental communication during puberty can be a protective factor for adolescents. In Egypt, girls have poor access to sexual and reproductive health services and there is a lack of information on puberty in school curricula. Yet little is known about girls’ other sources of information about puberty, including communication with mothers. We analysed 29 in-depth interviews with young mothers of girls in Greater Cairo to better understand mother-daughter communication about puberty. We examine respondents’ motivations for communication with their daughters, the type of messages they provided or expected to provide, and barriers to mother-daughter communication, paying particular attention to intergenerational dynamics with respect to how women learn about puberty. We found that while mothers wanted to, and did, play a primary role in communicating with girls about puberty, discussions were constrained by lack of information and embarrassment. Mothers were more open to discussing some aspects of puberty, such as hygiene, than others. Conversations may also be delayed due to social norms about what is appropriate for girls to know and when. Messages were often fear-based and embedded in norms that stigmatised girls’ sexuality. Programmes and interventions targeting mothers’ knowledge and communication skills around puberty should be adapted and tested in the context of Egypt.

Keywords:

• Egypt
• puberty
• menstruation
• adolescence
• mother-daughter communication

Acknowledgement

We thank Hanaa Soliman for her assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Authors’ calculations from the SYPE 2014 (Population Council 2014).

2 The ages of the daughters in the quote descriptors refer to the respondent’s oldest daughter. All names used are pseudonyms in order to protect the respondents’ confidentiality.

3 Authors’ calculations from the Survey of Young People in Egypt – Informal Greater Cairo (Population Council 2016).

Additional information

Funding

Data collection was funded by a seed grant from the Global Underdevelopment Action Fund at the Freedman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. The funder had no role in the design or execution of the study, or interpretation of data.